Journey to Beatrice Singleton, Charles S. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Singleton, Charles S. Journey to Beatrice. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.68489. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/68489 [ Access provided at 29 Sep 2021 04:44 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. HOPKINS OPEN PUBLISHING ENCORE EDITIONS Charles S. Singleton Journey to Beatrice Open access edition supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press Published 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. CC BY-NC-ND ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3266-3 (open access) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3266-8 (open access) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3264-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3264-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3265-6 (electronic) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3265-X (electronic) This page supersedes the copyright page included in the original publication of this work. Journey to Beatrice Journey to Beatrice Charles S. Singleton (Originally published as Dante Studies 2) The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore and London Copyright © 1958 by Charles S. Singleton All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The Johns Hopkins Uni,·crsity Press, Baltimore, :\laryland 2 1218 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London Originally published by Harrnrd Vni,·ersity Press, 1958 Reprint edition, 1 977 Second printing, 1981 Library of Congress Catalog Card ;\'umber n-F66 ISBN 0-80 I 8-2005-7 Preface This second volume of Dante Studies is aimed at bringing into view the main outline of allegory in the Comedy, and is written on the persuasion that, for some time now, we have been reading the great work in what amounts to an amputated version. It is not that the text of the poem, as we have it, suffers from any serious lacunae. We would seem to have the work in its entirety as to text. The lacunae are rather in us, the readers, and reside in that defi­ cient knowledge and lack of awareness which we continue to bring to our reading of the poem. Let this indictment be confirmed by the fact that not one of the dozens of commentaries of the Comedy published in the last half century is concerned to follow the outline of the allegory in more than a sporadic manner, wherein the reader's attention is called to the merest disjecta membra of that continuous dimension of the poem. Small wonder that in our time we have deemed the allegory to be such a negligible part of the poetry. There has been method in the madness of such a view, the signal instance in our own day being Benedetto Croce's reading of Dante. Yet no one seems to have noted that Croce's rejection of the allegory and the "allotria," as he called it, is but a late example Vl PREFACE of what is clearly a very old trend - as old as the Renaissance, in fact, which means about as old as may be, in this case, since that age followed so closely upon Dante's. Nor should this fact hold any special mystery for us, when we realize that the allegory of the Comedy is itself an imitation of Biblical allegory, as the Middle Ages conceived that matter; and it is common knowledge that the Renaissance soon disclosed a strong desire to discount and reject that way of reading Scripture. There came a time when God's way of writing allegory could no longer be taken seriously. Is it then anything surprising that Dante's allegory, an imitation of God's, should suffer the same rejection? Dante's allegory is explicit in the theology of his day. We have only to learn to recognize it there when we meet it. And when we become able to do this, then at once we find ourselves confronted with an embarrassment of riches. Instead of one good text to cite in evidence of a given point or pattern, there are at least twenty. And indeed perhaps all twenty texts should be published rather than the one we must choose with such difficulty from among them, so that we may finally be persuaded that the poet con­ structed his allegory on points of doctrine firmly established and widely current in his time, that Dante built with materials which were, so to speak, public property. But that abundant documenta­ tion must wait for another time and place. Here it was possible to cite but the one text in most instances, not the twenty, and, with the one, hope to suggest the others. Parts of the following chapters have appeared in the Annual Report of the Dante Society. I am grateful to the Society for permission to reprint these, retouched now to make them part of a comprehensive view of Dante's allegory. CONTENTS PART ONE • JOURNEY TO BEA TRICE I The Allegorical Journey 3 II The Three Lights 15 III The Three Conversions 39 IV Justification 57 V Advent of Beatrice 72 VI Justification in History 86 VI I The Goal at the Summit 101 VI I I Lady Philosophy or Wisdom 122 PART TWO • RETURN TO EDEN IX A Lament for Eden 141 X Rivers, Nymphs, and Stars 159 XI Virgo or Justice 184 XI I Matelda 204 XII I Natural Justice 222 XIV Crossing Over into Eden 254 Reference List 289 PART ONE· JOURNEY TO BEATRICE Chapter I The Allegorical Journey In first Studies,1 in a general way, two elements of the poem's structure were distinguished: allegory and symbolism. Such a distinction may be carried further, and its usefulness better evi­ denced, by an examination in far greater detail of each of these dimensions of Dante's Comedy. In the present volume, and first in order, must come a closer study of the allegory. Primacy may surely be claimed for this aspect of the great work. We have only to consider, for one thing, what a different poem this would be were it not first of all a narrative, the account of a journey. Take but that part of it away and the whole structure must collapse. Upon the outline of a journey all is threaded - even that other dimension, the symbolism of things seen. For it is of the essence of symbolism that things should point beyond themselves, be signs as well as things. But if "things" were seen to point beyond through the one hundred cantos of this poem and yet there were no going beyond to obey and enact their signs, their paintings would simply dangle without visible effect. The signs would be to no realized purpose. No unquiet heart yearning toward the goal 4 JOURNEY TO BEATRICE which they so insistently and eloquently proclaim would be there to respond to them. The journey of the poem is the journey of the unquiet heart 2 and its presence in the structure constitutes the very heartbeat of the whole. The signs visible in things are there for those who are still on the road of this life and move toward its proper goal - which is ever a goal beyond. These are road signs for the living. And Dante's most exceptional journey beyond, through the realms of the afterlife, is always the journey of a man who is still on the "road of our life" here. Only so can this be the double journey which it is: a journey there, through Hell and Purgatory and Paradise, and a journey here, an event in this "our life." Just how this may be so in the poem has already been noted. 3 The literal event of Dante's journey beyond this life calls to mind the event of a kind of journey here. Thus, even as things do, so also does the literal journey point beyond itself. But there is a difference. The things which are seen in the journey beyond point upward with their signs to the One who judges, who punishes or rewards; whereas Dante 's going, the journey as such, points back to the road of this our life and journey here. The direction of this dual journey, once it gets under way, is the direction in which all signs point. It is a twofold itinerarium to God. Clearly the literal journey attains to such a goal. So also does the reflected journey which follows the literal as its very shadow and mirrored image. And between the two there is al­ ways the unmistakable distinction as to time and place. But it is the time and place of the journey in allegory that call for some special scrutiny. For we say that this is a journey here, in this life. The road of it is here, yet where is that? And we say that it takes place now, but how now? These are questions which do not arise with respect to the literal journey. Never did a poem locate more exactly or stage more concretely the vast scene of its un­ folding action, nor was ever a poem more careful to tell its own time. This, literally, is the year A. D. 1300, this is Easter week , nor is the exact hour of day or night kept from us as we move along the way.